To health authorities, nothing is more important than people’s well-being. In this respect, it defies our understanding that the government has made a sudden about-face in its policy concerning contraceptive pills.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Food & Drug Administration (KFDA) repealed its earlier decision and said that emergency contraceptive pills will be kept on the list of medicines that require a doctor’s prescription. Birth control pills, however, will continue to be sold over the counter.
Only two months ago, the health authorities announced that the morning-after pills that are sold by prescription only would be available over the counter from the beginning of next year. The authorities also said they would make non-emergency oral conceptive pills available only by prescription.
The announcement was based on common sense ― a prescription should be required to buy drugs that can be abused and misused, whereas drugs whose safety has already been verified should be readily available.
Scientifically, non-emergency contraception pills must be prescribed, given that they need to be taken over a long period of time and have a higher risk of side effects. On the contrary, it is generally learned that morning-after pills are taken once within 72 hours of sexual intercourse and have few side effects. Therefore, there would be little problem if they are sold over the counter.
We know that there are different opinions about the health risks of morning-after pills ― some scientists allege that taking emergency contraceptives could cause more side effects ― and that the debate on contraceptive pills is associated with such tricky social problems as childbirth and abortion.
For these reasons, it may be understandable that the health authorities have decided to postpone the reclassification of birth control and morning-after pills for three years to monitor the side effects of the emergency contraceptives carefully.
Most disappointing and worrisome is that our policymakers have failed to persuade various interest groups and gave up their original plan under pressure.
It is well known that doctors and religious groups are in favor of making both types of contraceptive pills prescription drugs. Doctors would prefer more people visit hospitals in anticipation of increased revenue and religious groups would welcome it in the belief that requiring a doctor’s prescription would help reduce the public’s loose sexual morality.
Conversely, pharmacists and women’s rights activists have advocated making the two types of contraceptives non-prescription medicine, also for their own interests.
It’s deplorable for the government to step back from the ``principle’’ after facing a storm of resistance from interest groups. Our concern is all the greater, considering that there are still many important projects and policies to be dealt with by the lame-duck Lee Myung-bak administration.